


Fault

by HeavenlyDusk



Category: Subarashiki Kono Sekai | The World Ends With You
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Attempt at Humor, Crack, M/M, Time Travel, alternate title: time travel neku is about to mcfreaking lose it dot docx
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:42:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23921767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HeavenlyDusk/pseuds/HeavenlyDusk
Summary: Neku is back to the first week of the Game and it isdefinitelyJoshua's fault.
Relationships: (IMPLIED), Kiryu "Joshua" Yoshiya & Sakuraba Neku, Kiryu "Joshua" Yoshiya/Sakuraba Neku, Misaki Shiki & Sakuraba Neku
Comments: 7
Kudos: 189





	Fault

**Author's Note:**

> Just a short thing because I've really been wanting to write TWEWY again but I haven't gotten around to it. But finally, at last, I did something! Even if it's just 1k of Neku being mad.
> 
> Enjoy!

Neku wakes up in the middle of Scramble Crossing.

Again.

Naturally, the only thing he can do is scream. And scream. And scream some more, cursing out Joshua’s name while no one around him notices until he gets the first mission. _Reach 104. You have 60 minutes. Fail, and face erasure._ He’s kind of unimpressed. It’s the exact same mission he got the first time around, and he has to wonder if Joshua’s been slacking.

With nothing else to do without a partner, he heads to the statue of Hachiko, evading Noise with ease he didn’t realize he still had. Turns out three weeks playing the Game never leaves you.

There are already people being Erased at Hachiko. It’s worse than the first time it happened—he was amnesiac, didn’t care about people and was too busy panicking to really think about what was happening. Now he knows it’s _disgusting_ what the Reapers are about to do, have been doing, and though he’d like to do _something_ , he doesn’t have any power. At least, not until he finds Joshua and gives him a piece of his mind.

A hand grabs onto his wrist. “Forge a pact with me!”

Neku spins and his jaw drops. “ _Eri?_ ” Eri flinches back, letting go of his wrist. He hasn’t seen that outfit in a while. She’s never been one to stick to old styles once she’s found something new, especially when it’s Shiki designing for her, which she’s recently began doing. That outfit, plus the Game—it’s all too familiar.

Eri shakes her head. “My name is Shiki,” she says and, no, okay, that’s very wrong. Dread starts to settle in Neku’s gut. “Just—that’s not important. Forge a pact with me! Please!”

“Alright.” No time to think about _that_ when they’re being attacked.

They defeat the Noise together easily, Neku falling into a familiar pattern trusting his partner at his back, even if Shiki doesn’t seem to know this is familiar. His old pins seem to have come back with him, thank _god_ , but he holds back. He doesn’t want to decimate everything when he hasn’t had a chance to think about why he’s back yet. It’s good to fight with Shiki again.

“You’re a natural!” Shiki says—Shiki, in Eri’s body again, even though she’s been well past that insecurity ever since they got out of the first week. The same words from back then, too. He doesn’t like that. “What’s your name?”

“Sakuraba Neku,” he says. “Come on, let’s hurry and get to 104.”

“Right!”

He wants to go back down the Shibuya River where, surely, Joshua has to be waiting. That’s where he always was, when he wasn’t playing human with Neku during the second week. He wants to demand answers, but with the number of players getting Erased within the first day, he doesn’t trust anyone but himself and Shiki to finish the mission immediately. They’ve wasted too much time already fighting the Noise.

“You’re pretty good with those pins,” Shiki says.

“Thanks,” Neku says absently as he tries to figure out just _why_ Shiki is like this now. Why she doesn’t recognize him. “You’re pretty good with your pig too.”

“It’s a cat!” Shiki snaps. She puts her hands on her hips and peers at his face. “Hey, are you okay? You look a little…”

He shakes his head. “I’m fine. This is just—weird.”

“I get what you mean.” Shiki sighs, shoulders dropping. “But, after we get to 104, we’ll be okay! You’ll see! No Erasure for us!”

“Right.”

And, just like the first day of the first week all that time ago, they reach 104. Neku blacks out, and he wakes up in the Station Underpass on the second day. Shiki is looking at her phone and this time he doesn’t need to wonder what she’s looking at.

“I hope this works out,” she sighs.

“Good morning,” Neku says, making her jump.

“Neku!” She fumbles with her phone, shutting it off before he can see what has to be the picture of her and Eri. “Uh, good morning! Jeez, don’t scare me like that.”

“Sorry. Hey, I’ve got something to do today and I can’t really just go on my own without a partner, so—”

Their phones buzz with their new mission.

_Set the cursed statue free. You have 60 minutes. Fail, and face Erasure._

That proves it. If it wouldn’t startle Shiki, he would have started swearing. Fucking _Joshua_. The shock of the timer on his hand doesn’t even make him flinch. His nails are already digging into his palms.

“Alright, we have 60 minutes,” Shiki says as she pockets her phone. “The cursed statue must be related to Hachiko, right?”

“Sure, but can that wait for a bit?” Neku says. “Only one pair needs to complete the mission for all the Players to be spared. I’m sure someone will figure it out; we don’t technically need to do anything.”

Shiki’s eyes widen. “What? How do you know that?”

“Don’t worry about it, but I really have somewhere to go, and as partners, we can’t be separated. Let’s just trust other people, okay?”

“I don’t know…” she says uncertainly. “We don’t know if your theory is actually right.”

Neku frowns. He doesn’t want to waste time with Hachiko, and he _definitely_ doesn’t want things to play out the way they did last time. He could probably defeat Uzuki no problem, but he doesn’t need the attention. He just needs to find Joshua.

“Okay, how about this?” he starts. “We have 60 minutes. That’s a full hour. I don’t plan on going far, and we already have a pretty good idea of what the cursed statue is.” More like he knew exactly what it was. “We’ll go do my thing real quick, and then we can finish the mission if the timer is steal counting down. Deal?”

She eyes him distrustfully. It’s kind of awful, being looked at like a stranger by his best friend. “Tell me what you’re planning on doing first.”

“I’m… looking for a friend.” ‘Friend’ in the loosest sense possible. Joshua hasn’t met with him or anyone despite the open invitation, but Neku knows he’s been around. There are way too many feathers hidden in his room for him to just be gone. “We were together before I woke up at Scramble Crossing, but I have an idea of where he might be. I want to make sure he’s okay.”

That pulls at her heartstrings. There’s no way Shiki wouldn’t go along with it in the name of friendship. “Alright, we’ll do it your way,” she relents. He feels kind of bad for lying.

He smiles. “Thanks. Come on, this way.” They’ll miss meeting Beat and Rhyme like this, but they’ll have more chances. If things go the way they should, maybe nothing will even have to happen to Rhyme, or he can bypass reliving that experience completely.

Shiki voices her doubts as they head down the underpass and to the river, but Neku does his best to pacify them. He doesn’t do a very good job, if the way Shiki looks at him is any indication. That’s fine. He didn’t expect her to believe him—she and Eri always say he should stick to physical acts of comfort rather than fumbling through words.

“I think I’d like to go now!” Shiki declares as they reach the red door to the—completely unnecessary—hangout.

“It’s fine.” Neku opens the doors.

Dead God’s Pad looks exactly the same as it does in two weeks. The fish under his feet, the bar, the couches, the foosball—and luckily, Kitaniji is nowhere to be found. He’s probably meeting with the other Reapers, but Neku doesn’t really care. He’s not looking to fight him, so he takes the blessing for what it is.

“Where is this?” Shiki breathes, looking around in awe.

“It’s called Dead God’s Pad,” Neku answers as he takes out his Player Pin and activates it. “It’s where the Reapers hang out, but since today’s mission is still ongoing, they’re all out. Lucky for us.” He takes her arm and marches her through the door she can’t see.

“Wha—how do you know this?” she says, her voice going high with panic and confusion. Probably the only reason she hasn’t run by now is because she literally can’t. “Where are we _going_ , Neku?”

He winces. “You’ll see. I promise it’s nothing bad.”

A little more walking, and—there he is. Joshua, sitting on his makeshift throne just for the drama of it. Neku’s a little surprised to find Hanekoma there too, staring in shock at their appearance, but his attention is almost completely taken by Joshua’s smug little smirk.

“Hello there, dear,” Joshua purrs. “Lovely day for a Game, isn’t it?”

“Wait here,” Neku says to Shiki. She’s a bit too busy looking around and being confused to really do anything but nod, which works out fine for him. He smiles reassuringly at her, then walks a few steps closer to the throne.

Neku takes a deep breath—

And punches Joshua in the face.

* * *

Shiki’s partner is yelling at some silver-haired twink on a throne in a room hidden in a pad by Shibuya River that she didn’t know existed. Now, she hardly expected to know _everything_ about Shibuya, but she lived here her whole life and she always made sure to keep up with trends and the news, so it’s a bit of a shock that something like this exists in Shibuya and she hasn’t heard so much as a rumor about it. If Neku’s right about it being a place for the Reapers, she guesses it makes some amount of sense.

But that’s something to wonder about later. Her focus now is solely on Neku, who has a much louder voice than she thought he was capable of. She’s only known him for a day, but he’s seemed awfully calm about everything, all thing’s considered. Her anxiety has been horrible for the past two days for all that she’s been trying to hide it, while Neku looked completely fine.

(She's pretty relieved he really wasn't luring her down here for anything shady. She was concerned when he punched the other boy, but then the boy just laughed, so apparently it was nothing.)

“I promise, I don’t know anything, my dear,” the boy—she thinks Neku called him Joshua?—tells Neku, not at all phased by the fact that he’s being yelled at.

“Well it obviously has _something_ to do with you!” Neku shouts, throwing his arms in the air. “It’s always got something to do with you! Literally everything that goes wrong with this Game is your fault!”

“I didn’t see you complaining by the end of it.”

“Did you miss the part where we both had _guns_?”

“Please, you didn’t actually shoot me. Unfortunately.”

“ _Trust me, I’m starting to regret that._ And while I’m at it, stop leaving feathers around my room, you ass! Just knock on my door like a normal person instead of stalking me, why don’t you?”

Shiki’s starting to think she made a grave mistake choosing this boy as her partner.

At least the man with the truly terrible facial hair looks as freaked out as she is.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't have any continuation for this. Is Joshua actually the reason for all this? Who knows, but Neku's gonna be mad at him anyway.
> 
> Thanks for reading! (you can bother me on [tumblr](http://heavenly-dusk.tumblr.com/), if you'd like)


End file.
